“…it’s important to note, given the heated and endless debates between open access advocates and traditional publishers, that there was no control group. Bohannon agreed that was a limitation when we asked whether he had considered, as one of his sources suggested, the same spoof with traditional publishers:

“I did consider it. That was part of my original (very over-ambitious) plan. But the turnaround time for traditional journals is usually months and sometimes more than a year. How could I ever pull off a representative sample? Instead, this just focused on open access journals and makes no claim about the comparative quality of open access vs. traditional subscription journals.”

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Story Reviews

This story describes a small, ongoing study that touted lidocaine delivered to the back of the nasal cavity as an effective treatment for migraines. Although the story notes that the findings are preliminary, it does not inform us that the study wasn’t randomized or placebo-controlled; these are major drawbacks in interpreting the effectiveness of the procedure.

This story improves upon other recent Fox News efforts by including an independent expert perspective — the lack of which we commented on in a blog post about Fox News last week. But while our star score reflects that improvement, we still don’t think this story contributes very much to the public dialogue about health care. Our concerns are detailed in the review.

A study finds lower rates of gestational diabetes, but also more small babies, stillbirths, and newborn deaths in women who had bariatric surgery prior to their pregnancies compared with obese women who didn’t have surgery.